The invention is directed to innovative tools in proteomics, metabolomics, kinomics, and bioinformatics. The invention is also directed to the use of microfluidic/nanoliter biochemical signaling pathway devices as analysis/-synthesis/regulatory “biochemical chips” for implant in humans to control disease or pathologies and/or to provide therapies.
Implicit in these are individual sequences of chemical reactions, each of which begins with a chemical reaction of one kind, which, as it progresses or completes, subsequently initiates one or more chemical reactions of another kind. The latter reaction in turn causes one or more additional types of subsequent reactions to occur, and so on, to form chain that can act as a chemical channel for carrying information. Typically the products produced in a given chemical reaction are such that they initiate or inhibit one or more reactions that follow it. Because the information is carried by a stimulus being transformed by each reaction in the chain, the term “transduction” has been applied, in analogy with transducers that transform an input optical, mechanical, electrical, or mechanical stimulus into an output stimulus of another type. The structured interactions form a network, hence the terms signaling network and signal transduction network.